The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne (Piatkus, £6.99)Similar in some ways to Simon Lelic's recent The Child Who, this moving, insightful debut focuses on the relationship between Sebastian, a child accused of murder, and his solicitor Daniel, who has shrugged off his own damaged childhood but is forced to confront his demons by the disturbing strangeness of Sebastian's case and the death of his estranged foster mother Minnie (a fantastic character). Its conclusion is nail-biting courtroom drama, but this is really a novel about behavioural and class boundaries. The wealthy, like Sebastian's parents, abuse their children but are left alone by social services. Working-class Daniel, by contrast, was removed from his drug-addict mother at 11 – the same age Sebastian is now – and transformed by Minnie's tough love. It's easy to see why this caused such a stir at Frankfurt last year. If it isn't this year's Before I Go To Sleep, I'll eat my laptop.The Abbey by Chris Culver (Little, Brown, £6.99)A huge ebook success in the US, where it was a product of Kindle Direct Publishing, Chris Culver's debut is an easy-reading crime thriller whose progressive gimmick is that its hero, former homicide detective Ash Rashid, is Muslim. He has, however, the same urges and weaknesses as his Christian colleagues – notably a drink problem; his religion is relevant to the case, but never used by Culver to make political points. The plot turns on Rashid's efforts to find his niece's killer. It involves a vampire youth cult and feels a bit 2006, a bit leadenly post-Twilight. (The Abbey is a club in an old church, where the vampires hang out and drink blood.) It's no masterpiece, but it is a properly good, as opposed to merely competent, mass-market thriller, and that's impressive when you consider its self-published origins.The Guardian by David Hosp (Macmillan, £12.99)This standalone effort from lawyer Hosp introduces a new hero in CIA agent Jack Saunders. There are shades of The Moonstone about its McGuffin – a jewel-studded knife called "The Heart of Afghanistan", with the power to determine who controls the country. It has been stolen first by the Taliban and now by Charlie Phelan, a corrupt army clerk responsible for shipping. When weedy Charlie surfaces in Boston trying to offload it on to a local gangster, his disgraced-war-hero-with-a-diploma-from-the-school-of-hard-knocks sister Cianna gets involved. And Cianna, as Hosp never tires of reminding us, is hot stuff, with her red hair and "tight, fit" body. Every (male) conversation about her seems to begin or end with the line: "I hear she's very attractive." Hosp is a decent storyteller and The Guardian is an absorbing read, despite the stock characters and the pall of ordinariness hanging over the writing.The Falcons of Fire and Ice by Karen Maitland (Michael Joseph, £12.99)Company of Liars author Maitland swaps medieval England for Portugal in 1539 – a country in the grip of the Inquisition. After her father, the Portuguese royal falconer, is arrested on a false charge of heresy, Isabela can prevent his execution only by travelling alone to Iceland to capture two rare falcons. Maitland's teeming novel strives for epic status, jumping around between narrators and countries, giving us oracle twins, a powerless child king and a wily adventurer who may not be what he seems. If its Hammer Horror version of history is hard to take seriously, you can't fault it as (gruesome) spectacle. Maitland's language feels simultaneously authentic and modern: "Move aside, you useless pail of piss," etc. Invigorating.